Asian American theatre came to the United States along with Chinese laborers that moved to the west coast in order to participate in mining gold during the gold rush, building railroads, and starting up Chinatowns. Along with this move came different traditional operas, acrobatics, and puppet shows that originated in the 1850s. After anti-Chinese sentiment led to the Asian Exclusion Act, many people in the Chinese community moved to other regions and created new communities in which professional opera clubs could sprout. As Chinese opera houses turned into Mandarin-speaking cinemas, major theatres still used Caucasian casts for Asian themed plays, while the Asians acting in those plays would be cast as spies, cooks, and even vampires. However, as time went on Asian American Theatre was reborn, with groups such as the Northwest Asian American Theater and the Asian American Theatre Company, as well as the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. These theatres focused on the frustrations of Asian Americans in the United states, racism, and even cultural differences between Asian parents and their Asian American children. Asian American playwrights have moved to bigger audiences such as Broadway, an example the class focused on being David Henry Hwang. Asian American theatre has even went on to focus on “white-washing,” casts that have to do with Asian American culture (B. D. Wong and David H. Hwang led the protest against a play that casted a white actor as the lead of a play whose protagonist was Asian). To this day, Asian American theatre in the United States has moved away from the title of being the silent, background minority and towards a spotlight of their own.